Category: Andy Roberts

I don’t know if this is unusual or not, but I can remember exactly when I first learned to sing. Maybe there had been nursery rhymes and some joining in beforehand, I have no idea, but this was a clear moment when a new unheard voice suddenly popped out and surprised me 😮
I was sitting cross legged on the polished wooden floor in the hall of our primary school with all the other infants. Mrs Stevens, who was really the midday supervisor (𝐷𝑖𝑛𝑛𝑒𝑟 𝐿𝑎𝑑𝑦 back then) was on the piano, sight reading anything put in front of her. That would have been because the headmistress wasn’t available and the other two teachers didn’t play. It was following the main assembly, after the older children had been marched out and it was called a music lesson, or maybe just “singing”.
𝐀𝐬𝐡 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞
Songsheets were handed out, or song books with numbered pages. Some were hymns, (it was a state-run school but sort of attached to a church), some were folk songs and some sea shanties and all sorts. I can remember learning 𝐓𝐡𝐞 𝐀𝐬𝐡 𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐯𝐞, the words were not easily accessible but it was a jolly tune, I liked it. Over and over again we sang the first verse until most of us had started to get it. That was when my voice popped up and surprised me, loud and clear, a boy treble. Ooooh 😌
𝐅𝐞𝐚𝐫
But soon, the teacher was going to go all along the front row and make everybody try and sing one line all on their own!! 😟 As a small child, or at any age really, this sort of thing could often strike terrible paralysing fear into you. But I was enjoying myself singing, with this brand new voice I’d been given, on some sort of high from finding it, and felt that I would be all right this time.
And so to great relief, I passed the singing test happily.
That’s about it really, as far as the memory is concerned. Funny that I should remember after all these years. Maybe something to do with losing my voice for a few days recently and then when it finally came back, it triggered the old memory.

𝐆𝐫𝐨𝐰𝐥𝐞𝐫𝐬
I might also point out that this wasn’t the sort of school where they killed off the ‘growlers’. That awful ritual where they walk around behind the line of children singing and listen for a few seconds to each one. Then they sort the ‘sheep from the goats’ and relegate the ones who hadn’t yet gained the confidence to sing to just stand there, shut up and mime for ever more, or go and play in the sand pit.
𝐓𝐡𝐞𝐨𝐫𝐲
It’s a terrible thing to do, some never get another chance to believe that they ever could sing in their whole lives after that! It’s based on the false theory that ability or talent is innate, inherited or just some kind of magic. Anyway, my school seemed to be relatively progressive so that didn’t happen, no, not until much later on, when preparing for performance in front of gathered parents or school inspectors.